A Land of Stone and Thyme - Anthology of Palestinian Short Stories
edited by Nur and Abdulwahab Elmessiri

In the 1960's a new generation of Palestinian writers appeared both inside Palestine and abroad, influenced by foreign literature in translation and by serious critical attention. All the stories in this anthology are the work of this new generation including Liana Badr, Riyad Baidas, Emile Habibi and Farouk Wadi and their forerunners Samira Azzam and Ghassan Kanafani.

The writers of the diaspora developed many themes -- among them, life in the camps and the wandering Palestinian. Those living inside occupied Palestine had to contend with political repression and confined themselves to their inner worlds or resorted to symbolism and allusion. The stories are of Shadows of Paradise Lost, Exile from the Land, Refugees in Hostile Cities, Babel, Death-in-Life/Life-in-Death and Dreams of Paradise Redeemed.

About the Editors
Nur Elmessiri obtained a PhD from Cambridge University for her research on T.S. Eliot. She now teaches at the American University in Cairo, and writes for Al-Ahram Weekly. Abdel-Wahab M. Elmessiri obtained a PhD in Comparative Literature from the US and is Professor Emeritus of English Literature at Ain Shams University in Egypt.

Reviews
"These stories are drenched in a sense of common identity in the Palestinians’ loss of their land, their autonomy, and of their refusal to concede. A peasant, notified that his land now belongs to the Israeli state, continues to go off to his fields as he always has. In another story the population of a youth’s village is expelled at gun-point. He escapes and feels reborn, joyous at being alive and equal to anything that can happen. The stories often use a common fund of Palestinian, Arab and Qur’anic tradition and fable, but they remain accessible. Their subjects are easy to identify with as ordinary, thinking, feeling and suffering human beings, ensnared in the everyday consequences of national catastrophe. What is perhaps most surprising is the absence of malice toward the occupier, who though only a background figure, determines much of the narrative.

Ironically and exceptionally two stories by Ghassan Kanafani, assassinated by Mossad, portray from an Israeli point of view the ‘otherness’ of a Bedouin shepherd and the thoughts of a border soldier who has indiscriminately fired at people. Death is a constant presence but not the final word. A man who is dead emerges from his grave. A boy spins a fable that demonstrates that his missing father will return. This is not tendentious or sectarian fiction but one that, as if in passing, reveals an involuntary and undying need to live without molestation. This should more seriously disturb any opponent of Palestinian self-determination."
- New Internationalist Magazine